Board Meeting - September 12th, 2022

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Board Meetings
Previous: August 8th, 2022 Meeting Procedure Next: October 10th, 2022

Time: 7:30 PM
Place: Google Meet Telecom
To join the video meeting, click this link: https://meet.google.com/bdr-rjhv-cbk
Otherwise, to join by phone, dial [302-751-5581|+1 302-751-5581] and enter this PIN: 260 934 004#
To view more phone numbers, click this link: https://tel.meet/bdr-rjhv-cbk?hs=5

Agenda

Board Meeting Agenda & Organization

We need agenda items in a week before the meeting, discuss them ahead of meetings, and follow up on them after

For-Profit Use of Hive13 Policy

Suspension and Termination Procedures

  • From Dave B:

Recently, a member was suspended and locked out of the space for violating space rules. No mention of this was made on Slack or Discourse. I do not think that we want to be the kind of organization that has secret suspensions. I would like to see the board discuss measures to increase transparency on the rare occaisons where disciplinary procedures need to be used. Avoiding "public shaming" was a reason given on slack. In my opinion, if you do something bad enough that two members of leadership decide to suspend you and lock you out of the space you can deal with other members being made aware of it. Leadership remain accountable to membership by sharing their decisions, not by making them in private

  • The suspension was not decided by only two members of leadership, it was agreed upon by the entire board.
  • Three other members have come forward and verbally expressed concern about issues related to Coy's suspension.
    • They are Doug Schmidt, Austin Lutz and Pi.
    • Kate was notified about this 8/28/22 and has talked to at least one of them.
    • Although John Clark has about a page of notes from listening to them, all three have said that they will be at the meeting to speak for themselves.
  • We should review this and adopt a policy now to spell out how we handle this in the future.

Hive13 Deals with Conflict

Votes

  • Encourage more discussion
    • Require 1 month discussion for large votes (>$5k)?
    • Require a member poll each quarter to gauge what large purchases (>$5k?) have most interest?
    • Require 5 endorsements for a large vote? Encourages committee development vs. individual whim.
  • Reimbursement
    • Jim currently requires items have been delivered to reimburse
    • Does this actually have a purpose? can burden members who buy stuff for the hive in large purchases

Status of Pending Requests on Intweb

  • 9 pending applications
  • 2 pending storage requests


For Reference / Future Topics

Possible access to large grants

  • One of our guests tonight is a professional grant writer and believes that there can be a very significant positive financial impact on Hive13.

Tuesday Meetings - Not a board issue

  • time limit on frisbee?
  • limit frisbee to only people there to talk for themselves?
  • other ideas to keep concise?

Reports

Financial Report (link to Slack Post)

August 2022 numbers are now done. The good news continues. Consider the following as a BRIEF SUMMARY: Membership is holding steady at 165 souls. This is the third month in a row at this ALL TIME HIGH. The mix has changed (+5 full, -4 student, -1 PlusOne) and membership income is an all-time high at $7,638.07 due to the new mix, one member's $600 lump-sum annual membership pre-payment, and another member's one-time 3*$50=$150 catch-up payment. Other income for the month was minor at $18.82 from Stripe soda credits.

Our fixed expenses for August were higher than July ($4,272.28 vs. $3,811.53). Rent, insurance, and PayPal fees were in-line; but the warden expenses crept up in this month. Our discretionary expenses for the month were near normal budget limits at ($3,120.83) and represent reimbursements related to the metal working tubing/bar rollers and the kitchen infrastructure member votes.

We started the month with $44,038.92 in operating funds and ended the month at $44,283.88; a net positive of $244.96. Of this ending balance, $26,044.34 is "encumbered funds" for the 6-month rainy day reserve, lump-sum membership pre-payments, AC Fund Drive unspent balance, budgeted-but-not-yet-spent membership votes, and T-shirt income not yet returned to the Outreach Fund. This month's current allowance for discretionary purposes improved to $18,239.54.

The most recent $11,248.00 member vote for a new woodshop jointer and planer will be a significant investment that is not yet reflected in these numbers. We can absorb this expense but should consider to moderate other member vote requests for the next few months in order to rebuild our discretionary allowance.

The open finance site has been updated and the attached 2021/2022 summary PDF shows the details. Work continues towards providing an improved financial presentation to support strategic spending of our discretionary funds.

COO / Operations Report

Placeholder

Area/Warden Reports

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Tech Committee Report

  • Library Inventory: Provisioned a new VM for Jack Margeson to use for library inventory management
  • Infrastructure expense consolidation: Reached out to multiple members in order to gather a summary of who’s paying for what. So far, the results are stored in this spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kyNJE79yarajzmZuIN47eu_Gdic69ToRqFnPjNA7DZg/edit?usp=sharing (currently editable by the leadership group).  Once finished, we should formulate a plan / yearly IT budget. The current total is about $400 yearly across all member-paid services.

Outreach Report

Here's the Outreach news for this month:

  • Blink
    • Umbrella assembly/group work September 24th and October 1th
    • MOU should be received September 16th, will be posted in leadership discussion
  • MiC
    • We need another outdoor demo for the parking lot
      • Spinning? Learn to solder? Anything?
      • Another activity has been filled! Thanks!
      • Of course, all hinging on the weather.
    • Sign ups for security, tours, demo-ing, being cool going out next Monday
  • Shirts
    • Very excited for this goofy, very Ohio shirt!
    • Kostas P. is calling Aaron Monday a.m. to check on what sizes we can do (goal: XS-5XL offering) and keeping the shirts at $15 like we have historically.
    • This will be mostly MTO but having extras for merch during MiC could be great
  • Socials
    • Genuinely, we need more content for our socials. People need to see what we make, why we're cool, and that we are more than just Kostas P. making goofy Tiktoks.
    • Please message Kostas P. if you have content you would like on the socials. Classes, workshops, and events can be promoted there too.
  • Outreach Budget
    • As we get more and more out there, people will be looking to us for support and help that they may not have money for. Factoring a portion of the Outreach budget (like $500 annually with special cases discussed) for supporting maker endeavors and our community?
      • Investing in our community (local makers) not only shows we are engaged and active but we believe in our community. Also having friends is cool.
      • We will not be spending it on every project proposed but it would be nice to help our fellow makers and get the word out that we're cool.


Minutes

Attendees

Jack, John, Dave, Paul, Jim, Kostas, Ryan Anderson, Kevin, Chris, Pi, Doug, Pamela, Coy, Austin, Chris, Paul Vincent

Meeting transcript (rough): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SIwum_j4bLVVrfgc5t03vw5bHuCH1hjABm-f_8nbP9c/edit?usp=sharing

Action Items

  • All board members:
    • get your agenda items a week in advance. This will be strongly enforced going forward.
    • please at the very least read the conflict mediation documents, if not contribute.
    • Everyone look at Kevin and Kate's new membership handout document--review/refine.
  • Dave: send the document to Jack about the for profit-use statement to be included. Finish ideating upon the for-profit use document for future board voting and membership distribution.
  • Kostas: continue working on/ideating upon the conflict mediation documents by adding things that would be included (bullets) on what still needs to be included in the documents. Potential tuesday guest speaker--talk with Pamela
  • Jim: talk to Pamela about working on grant writing and how we can work on getting funding in the future.

Discussion Notes

  • Please make sure going forward that we're getting board agenda items a week in advance.

For Profit Use

  • Not something that we can enforce. We can't police it--because it is something that should not be an issue.
  • There is a great write-up done by the Dallas Makerspace on things pertaining to for-profit use
  • We plan on trying to implementing something in the near future close to what is outlined in the Dallas commercial use policy
  • This means we could not just change our mission statement to fix an issue here
  • Only way to change the document basing the Hive's 501c's rules would be to re-file with the IRS (1023 submission to the IRS)

Suspension and Termination Procedures

  • In the future, written statements should be distributed and signed by board members when it comes to verbal or electronically communicated warnings or suspension/termination procedures
  • Going forward--the board needs to be transparent with the general membership by releasing statements. No more sparing feelings or saving face
  • This particular suspension was not part of the problem with for-profit use in the Hive
  • Visitor notes:
    • Doug: everything should be documented in the future and both parties should be able to communicate and agree on the terms of suspension/warning
    • Austin: Hive needs to make an official policy around suspension and termination before enacting anything on a singular member
  • Plenty of time to still publish documents (that we do have) out to the membership
  • Key takeaways: more transparency all around, from the board, and also from the members.

Dealing with Conflict

  • Kostas talked about a draft of policy/procedure for mediation
  • Outlines grievances and how they should be sent out to leadership/board
  • We need to create a space where people are able to create discussion that doesn't end in negative conflict discussion
  • Everyone: this is a group thing. Please take a look at the document and even contribute, if you have something to say
  • Please note that this is a living document

Finance Report

  • Grant writing potential in the future
  • Financial support for outreach things in the future
  • Pamela (grant writing): interested in learning more about the Hive and learning more about what we're looking for in terms of funding or local organization
    • Mostly, finding grants and trying to fit into those categories aren't a great idea but if someone is interested in a grant that is available--those are the ones that we should watch out for
    • More grant information coming soon!
  • Ongoing conversation about member votes and reimbursement
    • We need to revisit our member proposal
  • We do not have to have reimbursements happen after every vote if necessary. If a big ticket vote passes, the person accountable for delivering upon the vote is NOT responsible for paying upfront for whatever the Hive is purchasing. Please contact Jim for financial arrangements in this scenario.

Outreach Report

  • Only things we have set up right now for Made in Camp is the Tesla Coil, Kevin's Big Torch Thing, and Button Making.

Tech Report

  • See above.
  • If there's anyone paying out of pocket for IT related stuff, please get them transferred over

COO update

  • Warden vacancies: CNC, 3D printing (potentially soon)
  • No outstanding storage requests!

Votes

  • Bigger, better discussion needs to be had around member votes
  • There was a little bit of heat in the last discussion but we're working on cleaning some of that up
  • We had a great turnout in discussion on the Discourse for the last vote. Let's see more of that.
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